Citation Source and Traceability for Carbon Steel Investment

What Data for This Category Looks Like

Carbon steel data mainly comes from public reports released by the China Iron and Steel Industry Association, official factory price announcements from steel mills, and real-time market data from third-party bulk commodity trading platforms. Data updates follow three rhythms: real-time market data updates every 15 minutes, factory price data updates daily, and industry analysis reports are released monthly. Document structures fall into two categories. First, structured market tables. These include fields such as carbon steel grade (e.g., Q235, HRB400), specification (e.g., Φ16mm rebar), origin, daily average price, total inventory, and more. Units are yuan/ton and ten thousand tons. Second, unstructured industry analysis reports. These include market supply and demand interpretations, policy impact analyses, and similar content. Single document lengths vary widely. Some in-depth analysis reports can reach tens of thousands of characters.

Constraints Imposed on Citation Source and Traceability

Carbon steel data’s multi-dimensional characteristics create multiple constraints for the traceability process. First, structured market tables and unstructured analysis reports coexist. Traceability must support both field-level precise positioning and paragraph-level segment extraction. Second, update frequencies vary significantly across different data sources. Real-time market data requires binding release timestamps accurate to the minute. Monthly reports need to mark the full release cycle. Third, document lengths span a wide range. Traceability for long text segments must avoid taking content out of context. It must clearly mark the start and end positions of the cited segment in the original document. Fourth, carbon steel data from different sources of the same category (e.g., prices of rebar of the same grade from different steel mills) are prone to confusion. Traceability must attach data source names and origin identifiers to ensure data is traceable and free of ambiguity.

Configuration Settings

Configuration Item	Recommended Value	Rationale
`chunkSize`	800–1200 characters	Covers the average length range of carbon steel structured market blocks and conventional analysis reports, balances segment completeness and recall accuracy
`recallChunkCount`	Top 6–8 results	Carbon steel investment research requires covering multi-dimensional data including prices, inventory, policies, etc. Avoids insufficient information in a single segment
`sourceRetrievalThreshold`	0.75	Differentiates carbon steel data from different sources of the same category, avoids confusing prices of same-grade products from different steel mills
`fileParseChunkOverlap`	100–150 characters	Covers paragraph boundaries in long analysis reports, prevents cited segments from losing contextual connections
`timestampEnable`	Enabled	Carbon steel price data has strong timeliness. Must bind data source release time in traceability
`structuredFieldExtract`	Enabled	Extracts fields including carbon steel grade, specification, origin, etc., to achieve precise traceability positioning

The parameter values provided on this page are conventional recommendations used as a starting point for configuration. Actual values are affected by material form, data volume, and business rules. Specific issues require specific analysis. It is recommended to test on your own samples before finalizing settings.

Three Common Configuration Errors

Setting maxContext to 1500 causes structured blocks longer than 1500 characters in the knowledge base to still be cited. The root cause is that the maxContext parameter limits the total context length of a single round of conversation. The allowed length of a single recalled segment is not within its scope. Long segments are automatically truncated before being cited, leading to traceability information that cannot cover the complete source paragraph.
The knowledge base retrieval hits target data, but only returns citation identifiers without specific content. The root cause is that the structuredFieldExtract configuration is not enabled. It fails to extract key fields including carbon steel grade and specification, leading to retrieval results that cannot be parsed and returned normally.
After the results of a knowledge base retrieval call in a workflow are passed to downstream nodes, the AI dialogue cannot correctly identify citations. The root cause is that the returnSourceMeta parameter is not enabled in the knowledge base retrieval configuration. This causes the transmitted traceability data to lack required fields including sourceName and publishTime, which does not meet the citation format requirements for AI dialogue.

How to Verify Correct Configuration

Upload a carbon steel data file containing both long-text analysis reports and structured market tables. View the parsed segment list to confirm each segment’s length falls within the range set by the chunkSize configuration.
Initiate a retrieval request containing keywords related to carbon steel prices, inventory, and policies. View the traceability information in the returned results to confirm it includes data source names, release times, specific fields or paragraph positions.
Configure a workflow to call a knowledge base retrieval node. View the output data passed to downstream code nodes to confirm it includes required fields including sourceName, publishTime, and content.
Adjust the sourceRetrievalThreshold parameter. Test recall results under different thresholds to confirm carbon steel data from different sources of the same category can be correctly differentiated.

Question material comes from public community discussions. Configuration values are common starting points and should be measured against your own samples. Verified on 2026-09-14.